As the Skies Fall Down
by Just A Writer For Now
Summary: Faye Trelawney is running from her infamous brother. It would seem that the RLS Orion would be a perfect place to hide, when the friendly midshipman, Jim Hawkins, suggests Faye as a replacement cook. But the Orion carries more than just passengers and Faye's brother, the leader of a smuggling band, hasn't dropped off the map just yet.


**Bongiorno amici! I've had this little idea for several months now and since I've been avoiding all of my summer classes, I've had plenty of time to finally write this down. XD I don't own anything from Treasure Planet...I'm a broke college student; I don't own anything really. Well, if you don't recognize the character from the movie, then I created him/her. (Yes, I know, it's yet another JimxOC story. At least Disney never ruined the movie with a sequel that introduced a useless girl. They left that to me, I guess.) Oh, also, there's quite a bit of angst/angry family stuffs in this first chapter, so if it's not your cup of tea...**

Faye saw the man, so obviously an officer in Parliament's Navy and made her decision.

Like so many times she had been left to clean up the mess and pretend that there was no smuggler's ring in the back of the estate. Hitching the too-large dress back on her shoulders, Faye sighed and picked up the broom, sweeping up the shards of glass into a neat pile. The officers would fly in at any minute and Trelawney was making sure his men were well hidden.

She needed four more crowns to pay the innkeeper at the Mercury Inn.

Trelawney had never given her money. Actually, Trelawney had never given her anything worth keeping, but she had managed to scavenge enough crowns to think that she could survive quietly on the Montressor spaceport for the two more months before she hit adulthood.

The officer's wallet was about to fall out of his pocket.

Faye used to pickpocket the smugglers at her brother's estate but her brother had caught her too many times. A few of the smugglers had realized what she was up to and had assisted her in a quiet way. They were no angels; they sided against the law. But they knew that their leader was a cruel man to his sister and giving a crown or two under the table to get the girl out of the house forever was their way of making amends for their abominations.

Faye snaked an arm out and snatched the wallet.

Having snuck out of Trelawney's house a fortnight ago, Faye had hidden aboard one of the freighters that sent the coal from the mines of Montressor to the spaceport. Wedged between a stack of crates and a tank of oil, Faye had felt in her pocket for the twenty five crowns she'd squirreled away. These little chunks of metal were her ticket to freedom.

"Hey!" the officer shouted, realizing what the girl was doing and he went to box Faye's ears.

Faye had been hit many times. The smugglers did not often bother her. And to Faye, being left alone was not a punishment, but a gift. But Trelawney needed a punching bag. She could no longer count the times she had been cleaning the kitchen and he had stormed in, purple with rage from the Navy officers having almost discovered the smugglers' keep. There were too many bruises on Faye from nights like that.

Faye took off running, the wallet left on the cobbled street behind her, where the officer and one of his lackeys were chasing after her.

The small round window in Faye's room at the Mercury Inn looked out to nothing but grime and dark alleyways. If she tilted her head, though, she could catch the tail of the constellation her father had shown her. "The Tower" he had called it, and had regaled her with a story of a planet far away with billions of people on it. He spoke of the people on Gaea and how they had built a tower to touch the sky. It was a comfort on the nights that Faye hid in her room because she had seen a familiar face in the streets of the spaceport. She tried not to leave the inn in the daytime, for fear that someone would recognize her, or that Trelawney himself was searching for his sister.

Holding her skirts in her hands, Faye's bare feet were soon bloody from the impact of the cobblestones.

The innkeeper's son wasn't much nicer than Trelawney. His parents were simple folk, who took Faye's money without questioning why a young woman was by herself. But Charles had sniffed out that Faye was trouble and spent most of his days trying to get her kicked out of the inn. When he wasn't doing that, he was causing her trouble by tripping her, pulling her hair and pushing her down the stairs. The only consolation for Faye was that this kind of thing wasn't nearly as bad as Trelawney throwing her at the wall for "talking too much lip".

Faye ran headlong into a merchant, who caught her by the wrists with a gentle laugh: "What's all the trouble, lass?"

Faye had had few comforts when she'd lived with her father. He was a poor miner, losing his health from the low-quality air. They had had enough though. Food, a small shack, a mandolin for her father to play when he came home, and fresh water. It wasn't much, but her father was a good man. He would not let Faye work in the mines and preferred her to watch the children of the other miners as a safe way of working.

"Let me go," Faye gasped, tried to pry herself from the kind merchant's grasp.

On a rainy night, a few days after her father's death, Faye had seen a ship come burning down from the sky. It landed miles away at the old Benbow Inn. Faye thought of going to the Inn to see if they had need of an errand girl; it was all she was good for. If she stayed near the mines much longer, the bosses would either kick her out or force her to work in the claustrophobia-inducing shafts. But then, from the light of her candle, she caught a glimpse of an envelope. "Typical," she said, "Dad would leave a letter." There was no cordial good-byes, only an address and the name "David Trelawney—your brother".

The merchant let Faye go, but it had delayed her immensely.

Trelawney had not pretended to be a kind man. He had not reeled Faye in and caught her in a trap; he had told her he was a smuggler and that he would give her board in exchange for work. She had not realized what a hard hand her brother used though. She had thought that he was merely a calculating man who would give her a room if she worked. She understood that there was no family bond between them, but she did not realize that her job included Trelawney using her as a way to take out his anger.

"You, girl! Hold up!" the officer said, and his voice was so close, Faye shuddered.

It was a simple plan, really. Live, hidden, in a tiny spaceport inn until she was considered an adult by Parliament. At this point she knew that Trelawney wouldn't just let her off the hook; Faye knew far too much about the smugglers' plans and locations. If she was caught before she was eighteen, she would be shipped back to her brother. Making sure that Faye was his ward was the only "familial" thing Trelawney had done. (He did not want her to leave because she knew far too much about his smuggling habits.) If she could lay low until she was an adult, she could fly to another planet and vanish without a trace. But being short on her rent for the inn had left her in a bind and she had allowed herself to be cocky about her pickpocketing skills.

"I said, hold up!" The officer said again and Faye felt a hand roughly clasp her shoulder.

The idea of freedom was the only thing that kept Faye going on the days she didn't go outside; cramped up alone in her tiny inn room. The idea of going somewhere and being able to go outside at night to stargaze like she used to with her father was the dream she had when she was sleeping or awake.

Faye reached around and slapped the officer across the face, hoping to the skies that it would surprise him and allow her escape.

She had fought back the first few weeks, but when she realized keeping her head down at Trelawney's ended better for her, she closed her mouth, took the hits and kept drudging through her day. There was nowhere else to go, and Trelawney had her guardianship. Faye had always been trapped, born into a poor miner's family, taken into a life of servitude…

…and now taken into the custody of a tall Navy officer. He had a blond crewcut and a square jaw. His eyes weren't unkind but they admonished her transgression. It wasn't the anger of the officer that Faye feared; it was the idea that he would feel his duty was to return her to her brother. Faye was steered into a nearby building by the man and plunked down in a chair at a long dinner table. The lackey who had been trailing behind the officer sat down at the other end and Faye finally caught a good look at him.

She tried not to make a noise, but it was hard not to gasp.

Jim Hawkins.

**Welcome to the bottom of the story! I know, it jumped around a bit, but I thought playing with flashbacks was more fun than paragraph after paragraph of exposition. I'm pretty excited about writing for the Treasure Planet fandom...actually I'm excited about fandoms in general. *sigh* **


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